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David Brooks must have thought yesterday was April Fools Day – that or he thinks he’s getting old so he decided to pen a column painting a rosy picture for seniors by coming to a senile conclusion. In The Geezers’ Crusade he comes to this wildly impossible conclusion:
It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change. The young lack the political power. Only the old can lead a generativity revolution — millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.
He arrives there from this bit of data:
One of the keys to healthy aging is what George Vaillant of Harvard calls “generativity” — providing for future generations. Seniors who perform service for the young have more positive lives and better marriages than those who don’t. As Vaillant writes in his book “Aging Well,” “Biology flows downhill.” We are naturally inclined to serve those who come after and thrive when performing that role.
The problem that he identifies is that:
The odd thing is that when you turn to political life, we are living in an age of reverse-generativity. Far from serving the young, the old are now taking from them. First, they are taking money. According to Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children.
Second, they are taking freedom. In 2009, for the first time in American history, every single penny of federal tax revenue went to pay for mandatory spending programs, according to Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute. As more money goes to pay off promises made mostly to the old, the young have less control.
Third, they are taking opportunity. For decades, federal spending has hovered around 20 percent of G.D.P. By 2019, it is forecast to be at 25 percent and rising. The higher tax rates implied by that spending will mean less growth and fewer opportunities. Already, pension costs in many states are squeezing education spending.
So his conclusion is that the problem is reverse-generativity and that the only people who can stop it are those who have the most to gain by perpetuation or even accelerating it. Why do I find that hard to swallow?
Along the way he offers this tortured logic for his conclusion:
I used to think that political leaders could avert fiscal suicide. But it’s now clear change will not be led from Washington. On the other hand, over the past couple of years we’ve seen the power of spontaneous social movements: first the movement that formed behind Barack Obama, and now, equally large, the Tea Party movement.
Spontaneous social movements can make the unthinkable thinkable, and they can do it quickly.
. . .
Old people now have the time, the energy and, with the Internet, the tools to organize.
The examples of spontaneous social movements were both driven primarily by younger people. He offers no evidence that this older generation will suddenly stop doing the things that helped them amass their political power in favor of taking the route that their grandchildren are pioneering – especially in an effort that would diminish their political power and rob them of their spare time.
Altruism and performing service is much easier and more immediately rewarding when it is directed at friends and relatives than when it is directed at an anonymous society.
The fact is that it really is clear that change will not come from Washington – it will have to come to Washington in the form of new voices and new leaders who have the ability to look past traditional divisions and traditional ideas and push through some new ideas using new alliances to bring about the kind of transformational changes that could actually avert eh looming economic crisis that virtually everyone agrees is on the horizon.
2 replies on “Don’t Rely on the Altruism of Baby Boomers”
As a geezer myself, I find Brooks (as always) to be ridiculous. How a guy with non-ideas like this gets a regular column in the NY Times is beyond me. In this case, I think it makes sense that we older folks are going to clamor to keep the benefits we have paid for through payroll taxes and have been promised and probably argue to extend them rather than cut them back. Obama’s commission (as proposed by Pete Peterson) to come up with ways to cut back SS and Medicare is going to be fought tooth and nail. Republicans are going to realize they can benefit by painting Dems as the evil menace that is trying to take away your benefits, and liberal Dems are against it anyway.
As for “spontaneous social movements”, I doubt Brooks would know one if it picketed his house. There was no spontaneous social movement behind Obama, that was a carefully orchestrated campaign with excellent marketing and was carefully plugged into the majority perception that we had been going the wrong way for 8 years. The Tea Party Movement does include within it many people who are legitimately angry at the way things are going in America, but they are funded, promoted and co-opted by corporate interests and there is little spontaneity left in its ranks.
Lastly, it’s very difficult to believe that there is deep-seated anxiety about the federal deficit sufficient to trigger a social movement. There is a deep river of lies and half-truths being propagated about this issue in the media. The thrust of that anti-deficit campaign seems to be that we must cut social spending and infrastructure spending and keep the government from creating jobs. No one seems to want to discuss rolling back the Reagan tax cuts and the runaway “defense” spending that put is into this mess – those are sacrosanct because they benefit wealthy interests. Somehow the entire burden for the deficit must be borne by those least able to pay. Kind of difficult to imagine a spontaneous social movement demanding that government provide less services to its members while leaving taxes where they are.
I agree with you on all counts – including the assertion that any campaign against the deficit is only political maneuvering if it does not seriously address reining in our defense spending and the tax-cut at all costs mentality that has been dominant among Republicans for decades.